In today's society, many highly delicate objects/materials must be delivered to remotely located recipients. This generally necessitates entrusting parcels that contain such objects to another entity (e.g., a messenger, postal or parcel service) for actual delivery thereof. Unfortunately, the majority of such entities operate in a manner wherein they are unable to ensure that such parcels are not physically damaged during transit.
As such, those who send such objects have been forced to take steps to package them in a manner that provides the most protection against physical damage in transit. Usually, this consists of wrapping the contents with one or more of the numerous commercially available packing materials such as so-called “bubble wrap,” and/or surrounding the contents with so-called “packing peanuts.” Such protection also can be offered by wrapping the contents in a towel, some used newspaper and/or other household materials.
While these packing options often are effective to protect such objects from being damaged in transit, they have several drawbacks. For example, they tend to create a mess and/or endanger the fragile objects during the (un)packing process, and they do not provide the ability to maintain the objects in a predetermined order and/or orientation during transit.
While, arguably, this latter drawback may not be an important consideration during delivery of all fragile/delicate items, there are some objects that must be packaged such that not only are they not broken or harmed during transit, but also such that they are not rearranged or displaced from their pre-delivery order/orientation.
Among such items are those that contain medical information, such as medical slides. Currently, there exist two popular slide-holding units (shown, respectively, in FIGS. 1 and 2) in which medical slides are placed during delivery. Both of these units provide somewhat adequate assurance that slides will arrive in the same order and orientation as when they were sent, but, unfortunately, suffer from many significant drawbacks.
Perhaps most significantly, neither unit can be mailed “as is”—that is, these units are of a shape, color and/or texture such that they cannot be mailed without first being placed into a separate mailing unit or without being wrapped with paper. Additionally, neither unit provides much, if any cushioning of the slides. In fact, each unit is designed such that a significant amount of space exists between the top of the unit and the slides contained therein. This readily allows for unwanted jostling of the slides during transit, which, in turn, could physically damage the slides.
Other problems arise due to the number of slides that can be held in each unit. For example, the unit of FIG. 1 can only hold up to five slides, thus requiring use of multiple units to deliver additional slides. And because the units are visually identical, use of multiple units in the same parcel provides an opportunity for confusion as to which slides are in which units.
On the other hand, the unit of FIG. 2 holds up to 100 slides. And while, on occasion, it may be necessary to hold that many slides in one parcel, most parcels generally only require space to hold a few dozen slides. Because of its capacity, the unit of FIG. 2 is quite large and rather heavy, thus likely requiring extra fees for postage/delivery as compared to smaller, lighter units.
Moreover, neither of these units provides a reasonable amount of cushioning for its contents during transit. Thus, they are forced to be wrapped with “bubble wrap,” packed with “packing peanuts,” and/or surrounded by a newspaper or towel in an attempt to provide such cushioning. Such efforts certainly add to the expense of the delivery process, as well as to the time, effort, mess and risk of damage to the objects during (un)packing, yet often do not even provide the desired level of cushioning.
Other known holding units, such as those depicted and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,176,284, 3,203,123, 3,235,068, 3,672,490, 4,523,826, and 5,044,500, suffer from these and/or other problems that also render their use impractical, expensive, unsafe, or otherwise contraindicated.
Therefore, a need exists for a light weight, protective containment unit in which fragile/delicate objects (e.g. medical slides) can be securely stored during transit wherein the unit is designed such that objects contained therein are ensured not to break or to be otherwise harmed or adversely physically affected in transit, and further ensured not to be jostled, rearranged, intermingled or otherwise displaced from their pre-transit order and/or orientation.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a containment unit that is designed such that its contents are ensured not to broken or otherwise harmed during transit, and such that the order/orientation of the contents is maintained during transit.
It would also be desirable to provide such a containment unit that is light weight, wherein extra postage and/or other fees are not incurred for delivery thereof, and made of inexpensive materials that are sturdy enough to ensure the structural integrity of the unit during most, if not all foreseeable transit conditions.
Moreover, it would be useful for such a containment unit to be relatively quick and simple to both assemble and/disassemble.
It would further be desirable to provide such a mailing unit that can be mailed “as is”—that is, wherein the unit is not required to be packaged in one or more additional packages/materials in order to be suitable for transit.